Seven Nation Arm-y

Ohai!

Sorry I've been away from the blog, I do have an explanation though. But first... PIGGIES!

The piggies are continuing to settle down and accept their roles in their little "society". Nellie is the boss pig, and Lucy has lovingly turned into her evil little minion. Lucy will gladly do Nellie's bidding. Recently Nellie's bidding mainly consists of nipping Eleanor in the butt. Lucy has been put in time out on multiple occasions for cornering Eleanor and repeatedly biting her. NOBODY BITES BABY IN A CORNER! Eleanor has kinda turned into a lil' recluse, she enjoys her hide-y places. It's funny how the song she's named after fits her personality. Prudence has probably taken the adjustment the easiest, her hobbies include comfortably lounging wherever possible and hanging around Maggie. Maggie has grown to accept the babies and she's actually quite fond of the attention they give her.

Last night I gave Eleanor some extra attention because miss Lucy-fer decided to block her into a corner on two separate occasions in one day! Poor baby needed some snuggles. So she got some extra cuddle time with me watchin' TV. While her experiences with "Wheel of Fortune" didn't amaze her "The Colbert Report" blew her little mind. She stood on my hand and watched the entire episode. She then browsed reddit with me and eventually fell asleep on my arm. Too freaking cute.

God I'm adorable...

Selfie! #NoMakeup ;)

Taking a snooze on mommy

Told ya she was freakin' cute.

Ok... moving on to why I was absent for a lil' over a week. Well...

Yup, BOTH of my arms have been bothering me for the past week or so! GO ME! Bothering is a wee bit of an understatement... MY ARMS FREAKING HURT! I think something either in my right forearm or elbow caught, basically rendering my entire arm useless. I used my handy dandy ace bandage to alleviate the problem for the time being. As for my left... I'm pretty sure something caught in my forearm towards my wrist. Again, ace bandage and hope I can manage it on my own. I wasn't posting because while I technically can type with one hand, I only do that when I HAVE to. Not exactly a comfortable thing to do. Plus, it would take ages to write the damn post! Oh well... fingers crossed that I won't need surgery for these bastards.

At least my nails look awesome :D

The tumors seem to have unhooked themselves for now *knocks on wood*. If it keeps happening then it's off to the orthopedist I go! If it's a problem with the arm I can deal, that would be a fairly simple surgery. If it's in the elbow region... eh... that could be trickier. Anything near a joint is always harder. Even then, it's my right hand... not my dominant one. It would probably be a harder recovery... but I'd live. Meh... in the meantime I'm just gonna act like it won't be a massive problem and hope that my tumors listen.

Crippie's Tippie - If you use ace bandages, try to obtain ones with velcro and or some type of self-adhesive capability. Nothin' worse that getting poked by those stupid pointy metal fasteners. (the ace bandage in the picture is velcro BTW, pretty sure I saved it from a surgery)

CRIPPLEFEST 2013!!!

Ohai Y'all!

I want to thank you guys again for all of your kind words. The past week has been extraordinarily difficult, but I think I'm on the mend.

This weekend was Cripplefest, and I had an absolute blast. We had 48 people at my house. Old cripples, adult cripples, teenage cripples, kiddie cripples and even baby cripples all under one roof! We discussed doctors, scars, tumors (and what to name them), and more. All the kiddie cripples played soccer on a completely even playing field, granted those kids didn't need an even playing field... they were wicked good at it. The only difference was that they knew not to whack the kid with the fixator on his arm. Personally, I had a hula-hooping competition with some little girls. I was nice and let 'em win, plus I taught them some tricks. Surprisingly I didn't get the crap beat outta me by small children. Quite the contrary actually... one of the baby cripples took a little snooze on my lap. The kiddie cripples also enjoyed carrying Helen around (she got food out of the deal, so she didn't care) and petting Nellie, Maggie and Aggie.

I think it's safe to say that Cripplefest was an immense success. Cripples got to meet other cripples for the first time, they got support, and they got to be normal. Not to mention everyone got cake pops, the cake pops alone made the day awesome.

So yeah, that was my weekend... it was crazy but I loved every minute of it. Things are still a little nuts around here, we've got some relatives staying with us and... um... what else? There was something else I wanted to tell you guys but I forgot...

Oh right... I acquired some pigs a few hours ago!!! I'll post more about 'em tomorrow. I'm pretty sure this proves that I am in fact, insane.

Crippie's Tippie - I know having a disability can make you feel extremely isolated, but you are NOT alone. There are people out there who understand what you're going through.

HAWMC - Picture This!

Ello Everybody!

I hope everyone is enjoying their weeks thus far. My week is going relatively well, I'm starting to get back into the swing of things since the loss of Mama Pig and the weather is improving so I'm not in as much pain.

Today's HAWMC blog prompt is a relatively easy and fun one. Here we go... Wordless Wednesday - Post a picture that symbolizes your condition and your experiences.

I thought for all of 5 seconds before I thought of the perfect picture to post. It's a bit of a repost... but it's still awesome.

Yup, I went for Fanny. Why? Because she is a literal representation of my condition and experiences. One of 100's of bone tumors throughout my body. Not to mention the whole needing to have surgery in order to remove these little bastards thing. The happy face drawn on the tumor symbolizes my warped sense of humor and resilience in dealing with being a cripple.

Wow, I totally sounded like an art school student there.

Well... I reckon that's it for tonight, but... I POSTED TWO DAYS IN A ROW! YAY CRIPPIE!

Crippie's Tippie - If you're having some weird object removed from your body... BRING A CAMERA!

NHBPM - Crippie Interviews Some Tumors

Ohai Y'all

Man, I suck at the NHBPM thing this year. In my defense, it's probably for the best that I didn't follow yesterday's prompt. It was hella depressing "What do you hope happens to you blog after you die?" REALLY?!?!?

Lucky for us today's prompt is MUCH more entertaining, and not as morbid. Interview your health. Ok, here goes nothing...

Crippie - Hey everybody! Welcome to Crippie's Corner! Tonight we have a special guest, ladies and gentlemen I present A. Tumor!!!! *applause*

A. Tumor - HEY CRIPPIIIEEEEEE! Great to be here today

Crippie - Glad to have you, now let's get to the questions

A. Tumor - Shoot! 

Crippie - I hear your most recent project was irritating my middle finger. Can you explain that?

A. Tumor - You bet! One day I got a call from DNA Studios and they told me to pop up, so I chose your middle finger

Crippie - Couldn't you have picked a better place?

A. Tumor - Better place? YOU WERE INADVERTENTLY FLIPPING THE BIRD! That is the greatest location ever. Plus, in the scheme of things, a finger is a pretty sweet place to have a tumor. 

Crippie - Aren't you worried about being evicted, like your friends Fanny and Pointy?

A. Tumor - YOLO! 

Crippie - Did you really just say "YOLO" to justify where you grow on bones? Do you not care about the quality of life for the person, or your own life for that matter?

A. Tumor - Nah bro I do what I wanna do. If I wanna grow in your hip socket I'll grow in your hip socket. Sure there's a chance of being forcibly removed but it's a chance I'm willing to take. 

Crippie - Is there anything you can say that won't make you sound like an asshole?

A. Tumor - Probs not

Crippie - Is there any rhyme or reason to anything you do?

A. Tumor - HELL NO! I'm spontaneous... YOOOOLLLLLLOOOOOOO

Crippie - STOP SAYING YOLO! 

A. Tumor - Carpe freakin' diem... better?

Crippie - But why do you do this?

A. Tumor - For the lulz mostly

Crippie - So let me get this straight... genetics dictates that you grow on bones, and you grow where ever you darn well please, regardless of what it will do to the person?

A. Tumor - Yup, expect I don't go everywhere I want. I mainly grow on long bones. Believe me I would love to mess with that skull of yours.

Crippie - Annnnndddd now you're creeping me out. You know what, I think you're just trying to make my life difficult. You can't even give me decent answers or any insight as to why you are here!!!

A. Tumor - You'll never get a decent answer from me, you've just gotta accept me as I am

Crippie - I guess you're right... you're still a dick though

A. Tumor - Never said I wasn't... YOOOOOLLLLLLLL

Crippie - NO MORE YOLOS! And we're out of time for tonight! Join us tomorrow for an emotional interview between Helen the Dog and her detached retinas. Can they bond?!?!?! THANK YOU EVERYONE, YOU'VE BEEN A TERRIFIC AUDIENCE!!!!!!!!! *Applause*

Yeaaaaaahhhhhh... I think I have an over-active imagination ;)  Well, I hope everyone has an awesome day tomorrow. I've got a looooonnnngggg day of work ahead of me, so I should probably get to sleep. Something tells me I'll be having dreams about scumbag tumors saying YOOOOLLLLLOOOOO (Yolo means "You Only Live Once" if you weren't aware)

Crippie's Tippie - Sometimes it best not ask why, because there is no answer and it will only make your illness look like a bigger asshole. 

Keep On Waiting.......

Ohai

The Mama Pig Update - Annnnnnnnnnnddd we're back to square one. I returned home from work today to find blood in the trio's cage. After inspecting all the pigs I discovered that it was Mama Pig. After watching her for a little bit I came to the conclusion that she has another UTI. *Sigh* We're gonna attempt to flush out the infection. Crippie has been giving Mama Pig about 2 cc's of water every 3 hours or so. I'm also giving her the chinese herb Shilintong, which should act as an anti-inflamitory. If she doesn't get better we'll take her to a vet. Mama Pig probably is genetically predisposed to bladder issues. She passed this trait on to Nellie, Frida, and Emma. So they will all periodically get UTI's. So yeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh, Mama Pig requests ninja healing vibes. She's ever so tired of being sick.

Moving on to MRI news, my doctor has reviewed my film and he will let us know what's going on tomorrow. While this is kinda annoying that he couldn't have just called us with the results, this is ultimately a good thing. If my ortho was concerned about a tumor being cancerous he would have called us today. He also said that I don't need a second MRI... YAY CRIPPIE!!! This also means that my ortho could clearly see my pelvis in my first MRI and that he should hopefully know why I was having problems sitting! Crippie is super curious to find out what's going on with that. The whole sitting issue has improved quite a bit with my total pillow buddy. I now only use that at work, cause that's where I sit the longest. Crippie eagerly awaits these results. Thanks for keeping your fingers crossed guys, it's been working thus far!

Since I'm pretty sure that Fanny will be removed Crippie can't help but think of funny things to do with the tumor. I know I want a photograph on Fanny once she's out, but Crippie thinks it would be rather amusing to keep her in a jar. Crippie could glue google-y eyes on it! It would be like "my pet rock"... ONLY MORE AWESOME! If y'all think that this is just bizarre and creepy, this is just how Crippie eases herself into situations like this. I have to laugh about how I'll have a huge scar on my ass... and knowing my luck it will keloid. It will be like cripple tramp stamp! I can also picture the recovery process like the hospital scene from Forrest Gump... lying on my tummy eating ice cream.

Again, might seem weird that Crippie thinks like this, but finding the humor in situations like this makes them soooooooooooooooooooooooo much more bearable.

 Crippie's Tippie - Humor is the greatest medicine. If you don't laugh about something, you'll cry

Wait For It..................

Greetings!

The Mama Pig Update - Mama appears to be stable. She's returned to her perky old self. She eats, drinks, roams about the cage as usual. Crippie will continue to monitor her on occasion. I'll also be keeping my eyes on the whole "losing her hair thing" if it was related to the whole tummy thing the hair will grow back in a week or so. If not, I'll have to look into ovarian cyst treatments. I hear there are hormone injections that treat the problem so I wouldn't have to worry about spaying her.

On to the MRI! Crippie sent her doctor the MRI images today. He should receive them by Monday. Hopefully I'll get some results by Wednesday. While the MRI images were in my possession I tried to look at them and see if I could spot the problem. Alas, I cannot read MRIs in the same way I read X-Rays. One thing I could tell from the images is that fanny is freakin' huge! From what I could see, I saw a normalish looking hip and then BAM.... MASSIVE TUMOR STICKING OUT OF IT!!! My guess is that the MRI will show that Fanny is freakishly large and is pressing against something. Crippie's gut reaction is that I will be needing surgery to remove Fanny. This doesn't worry me in the slightest. Crippie will just have to find a good time to take two weeks off of work, remove Fanny, and be done with it. Would any of my lovely readers have any tips on telling their boss that they need to have surgery?

One thing Crippie is slightly anxious about is the possibility that Fanny transformed into a cancerous tumor. Her rapid growth, super fun size, and the fact that she causes pain do point to that possibility. If *knock on wood* Fanny turns out to be a super fun cancer tumor Crippie will need to remove it as soon as humanly possible. While I could deal with that, I hope that's not the case. On the bright side I didn't get any calls from the radiologist saying "get your ass to an oncologist ASAP". If it was blatantly obvious that Fanny was a super fun cancer tumor, someone would have told me. Let's keep our fingers crossed that Fanny is nothing more than a special high risk tumor.

In random Guinea Pig news... yesterday Crippie went to the pet store to obtain dog food and I went to look at their piggies. Most of them were super happy energetic babies, but there was one who was looked really sad. The poor little guy has been there for months and is now "on sale" for 5 dollars. I went to take a closer look as to why he was so sad and I quickly realized why. Poor baby had some form of eye injury or infection. I couldn't tell if the eye in question had been removed all ready or not but I don't think he'll be able to see from it again... and if that eye hasn't been removed it probably needs to be. Crippie cannot afford the vet bills for this special guy, otherwise I would have scooped him right up. Seriously, you could be looking at over $1,000 for the vet bills. So if any of my local readers are looking for a male pig and can afford to take care of this one... please take him. He's a beautiful pig, he looks like Maggie with a white beard. I'm sure that with love and treats he'll be a sweet little boy. Crippie thinks that you can probably convince the store's owner to give him to you for free, since it's probably their fault that he lost his eye. Feel free to contact Crippie if you have any questions.

Crippie's Tippie - Learn to read MRI's... saves you soooooooooooooo much anxiety

Hips To Be Square

HAPPY FEBRUARY!

Dontcha just love punny titles, Crippie certainly does! There is a reason for the punny though. Crippie's hips have been bothering her for... I dunno... maybe 5-ish years.

Yup, those are Crippie's hippies (and this x-ray is 4 years old so God only knows what they look like now). For anyone who has ever wondered what MHE was, it's the bumps and irregularities on my bones. It's most clearly visible in my entire left hip socket and in that circle on the right side of the x-ray (why yes that is baseball sized tumor on my back side).
Shockingly, my completely effed up left hip doens't bother me, at all. Literally no pain from that site. My right hip is the one that is being a mofo. It almost always causes me some form of discomfort, it's like a feeling like a lead balloon is expanding in it. Me thinks most of this pain is from arthritis.
I'm wondering if there are any solutions you guys could recommend? Why I am telling this to you, my lovely readers instead of a doctor? I know my doctor's answer, invasive surgery that involves dislocating the hip to remove whatever tumors are getting in my way and causing the inflammation. Yeaaaaaaahhhhhhh... noooooooooo. Crippie knows her hips will not last for her entire life. My guess is that I will have hip replacement surgery within the next 20 years. In the meantime I want to prolong the life of my hips for as long as humanly possible. Any hippie tippie's readers?

Crippie's Tippie- Learn to read x-rays, it comes in surprisingly handy at times. 

Remembering Pointy- One Year Later

Hey Y'all!

Crippie was just looking at her calendar when she noticed that today marks the 1 year anniversary of her 10th surgery. It might not seem like something blog post worthy, but this means that I haven't had any serious medical issues for an entire year *knocks on several pieces of wood*! YAY CRIPPIE!!!
I remember it like it was yesterday *insert dream sequence music*. My really awesome display tumor Pointy had grown to a point where he could lacerate something and or break through my skin. So Crippie opted to spend her last week of her last Christmas break having the bastard removed and recovering from the surgery. I knew this particular surgery was going to be relatively easy compared to some of the other surgeries I've had in the past so I wasn't terribly worried. It wasn't until the night before surgery that the nerves kicked in. Since Crippie is verrrryyyyy familiar with having surgeries I know what's coming, the whole waking up from surgery thing, the whole "my heart beat gets really irregular after surgery" thing, etc. When the nerves and everything do set in I have a tendency to start violently shaking, picture having the chills times 10. So I spent the night before on my living room couch, watching movies, and violently shaking.
Crippie lives about an hour and half away from the hospital and my surgery was scheduled pretty early in the day, so we had to leave the house around 4:30 in the morning. Once I got to the hospital itself the shaking only got worse, eventually some heating blankets made it go away. Thankfully Crippie's nurses were super nice. I mentioned how much I hate having IVs put in and the nurse was like "Oh... if we put a hot compress on your hand for five minutes before I put the needle in it won't hurt as much", and go figure it really didn't hurt... OTHER NURSES FOR MY OTHER 9 OPERATIONS... Y U NO DO THAT!
Crippie is also known to very nauseous before surgery, we talked to my doctor beforehand and he prescribed a patch to put behind my ear which surprisingly stopped most of my nauseousness. I still threw up before the surgery anyway, but the patch helped. After Crippie was done vomiting the doctors gave me some "happy" meds and boy howdy did they do the trick.
Next thing I knew Pointy had been removed and I was waiting in recovery. I was literally in no pain, quite the welcome change. Crippie spent the next few hours napping, waking up from a nap, nap again, wake up, nap, etc. Before I knew it I was discharged and on my way home!

My recovery went really smoothly. I was hardly in any pain, probably a 3 or 4 on the pain scale. A week later I returned to school and everything went back to normal. All I have left of Pointy is my dandy Tampon scar, which still totally looks like a tampon.
*Raises a glass* Here's to you Pointy, you were a great little tumor and I'll never forget you. Tell your tumor brothers and sisters to NOT cause me any problems!

CRIPPIE'S SURGERY TIPPIE - Have the following things in the car for your ride to and from the hospital... blanket, pillows, and a trashcan with several trashbags.